If you're planning a teabagging...

April 14, 2009 9:03 PM

...you're gonna need a Dick Armey.SLYT.
posted by emjaybee (49 comments total)

Dammit, I previewed, title didn't come out right. Sorry.
posted by emjaybee at 9:04 PM on April 14

Watched the podcast this morning, got some hearty chuckles from this sad sac. Countdown's writers really went balls-out with this one.
posted by porn in the woods at 9:08 PM on April 14 [2 favorites has favorites]

If you're planning a teabagging across the country, you don't just need a Dick Armey. It just takes a lot of sack to even try.
posted by chimaera at 9:08 PM on April 14

So, when is it exactly these Republicans are planning to suck on my balls?
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:13 PM on April 14 [15 favorites has favorites]

A politician's candor always increases in direct proportion to proximity to retirement. That must be why Dick Armey, the departing house majority leader, so openly discussed his party's version of pork-barrel politics with the A.P. "There is an old adage. To the victor goes the spoils," he said, explaining why Republican districts have received an average of $600 million more annually than Democratic districts since the Republican takeover. (By the way, that is nearly 18 times the partisan disparity that existed -- in the opposite direction -- when Democrats last ran the House.) It was good of Professor Armey to share his governing philosophy with us now, even if he and his pals Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay forgot to mention their partisan budgetary objectives when they were promoting the Contract With America in 1994. But their libertarian admirers may be disappointed to learn that these great statesmen were more focused on redistributing wealth upward than in reducing the size of government.

posted by Brian B. at 9:21 PM on April 14 [3 favorites has favorites]

There will be those who, upon viewing this clip, likely will commence with the tongue-clicking over the collective social corrosive effect of, say, news spoofers such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and no doubt make some totally sincere and compelling points about the entertainmentification of news media citing Debord thus and so, but I'll be damned if that didn't crack my shit up. I like to imagine Twain is smiling somewhere. He ain't anywhere of course, but he's smiling about that, too.
posted by joe lisboa at 9:30 PM on April 14

Rachel Maddow and Ana Marie Cox have a bit of fun at the teabaggers expense.
posted by homunculus at 9:35 PM on April 14 [5 favorites has favorites]

Fox host wonders if Obama administration will send ‘spies’ to tea parties.
posted by homunculus at 9:41 PM on April 14

Sure, but if they're not doing anything wrong, then they don't have anything to worry about.

Also, why isn't this being restricted to the "free speech zones"?
posted by swell at 9:54 PM on April 14

It's too bad that canceled 1600. Schuster can get down and dirty when he wants to. I was watching it yesterday and couldn't believe he got away with it. He said the Clintons were 'pimping' Chelsea and got suspended for two weeks. I think his sarcasm can top KO's. They probably canceled 1600 to make way for Ed Schultz. Anyway, that was some good writing, and delivery.
posted by Flex1970 at 9:57 PM on April 14

I think those "spies" are called journalists, and they aren't sent by The Government. If Fox News is sending their smiling faces and broadcasting the party events, it's frickin' public knowledge.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:58 PM on April 14

Has anybody in the media actually come out and explicitly stated the commonly accepted definition of tea-bagging yet, or is it a media-wide inside joke? (This whole thing is simply mind blowing)
posted by Auden at 10:04 PM on April 14

This is probably the funniest and most worthy slyt I've seen. Thank you.
posted by christhelongtimelurker at 10:08 PM on April 14

(This whole thing is simply mind blowing)

I think you're doing it wrong...
posted by birdsquared at 10:21 PM on April 14

Fantastic job Schuster! I LOLed...
posted by schyler523 at 10:26 PM on April 14

Schuster and writers of course...
posted by schyler523 at 10:27 PM on April 14

Wannabe Teabagger-in-Chief Newt Gingrich in Hot Water over $4 Million in Private Flights
posted by homunculus at 10:36 PM on April 14

both [beck and hannity] are looking forward to an up close and personal taste of teabagging themselves

A succinct summation of the GOP's rilin'-up-poor-whites-to-rise-up-for-rich revolution. Seems they are never done with face-fucking their constituents.
posted by sarcasman at 10:43 PM on April 14 [2 favorites has favorites]

Lot of stupid innuendo there. Still this does kinda ask for it. I dunno democratic editorials seem to have a lock on smarmy double entendre, but does the GOP have a lock on making something inappropriate to the point of antagonizing?
Because this type of thing and the purple heart band aid crap really makes me want to take a ball bat to someone.
Anyone want to do, y'know, actual work? Maybe put something on the line? Risk - y'know - anything? Ghandi busted his ass to get arrested and agitate in the salt march to Dandi. Hell the Working Committee of the Congress didn't even care at first.
Then you've got people laying it on the line with MLK getting firehosed, bit by dogs and beaten because they're treated as sub-humans - that matters, so there's actual risk involved.

But this candy ass astroturf movement gets play because people are taking store bought tea bags and throwing them somewhere or destroying them? F'ing pussies.

Y'know joe lisboa, you're right, it is amusing. But it's pathetic as well.
Twain, brilliant satrist that he was, spoke from outrage, "To the Person Sitting in the Darkness", "The War Prayer", "The United States of Lyncherdom," all reveal his anger, his involvement, and - in authoring such controversy (for the time) risk.
The jokey news really doesn't. I'll give Colbert and Stewart credit for what they do, and they do speak truth to power sometimes. And at best they deal in revelation, like any good jester (and they're often at their best).
But they don't say "Fuck you" to power the way Twain did. Or Gandhi, or MLK, or the guys who put something on the line, maybe get arrested, for what they believe in. They were involved.
But hell, anything is better than ... whatever the hell this teabag b.s. is. Is it even worth mockery? Well, ok, probably. But some things, like this, deserve more amperage.
posted by Smedleyman at 10:45 PM on April 14 [3 favorites has favorites]

Fox host wonders if Obama administration will send ‘spies’ to tea parties.

Jesus, that's as about as irresponsible as a news organiztion can get. "Those people with the signs that say Obama isn't a U.S. citizen and is a crypto-Muslim? The people wearing racist anti-Obama t-shirts? The signs that are nominally jokes about armed revolution but are more creepy and disturbing than anything? The various far-right religious nuts?

Oh, well those aren't real teabaggers. Those are agent provacateurs from ACORN, of course."

Nevermind the fact that ACORN has absolutely nothing to do with the teabag parties and everything to do with providing an unthinking, Pavlovian response amongst rabid right-wingers, nevermind that this is nothing more than a pure lie, this is the lamest bit of "journalism" I've seen in a while. The fringe wingnuts in these teabag parties will now be considered leftist spies by FOX news-watching idiots.
posted by zardoz at 11:19 PM on April 14

Dick Armey before he dicks you!
posted by ericb at 11:47 PM on April 14

Grassroots, my ass. It's Astroturfing Supreme.

"The Republican National Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee are fundraising off the tea parties." *

Americans for Prosperity writes Facebook message offering financial rewards for publicizing tea parties.

posted by ericb at 11:59 PM on April 14

My dog is teabagging himself this very moment.
posted by orme at 4:16 AM on April 15 [2 favorites has favorites]

Wasn't the whole of the Contract with America crew really a dick army?
posted by absalom at 4:46 AM on April 15

No matter how incompetent they may be in other areas, it's a little hard to believe the "teabaggers" didn't know or haven't been told the slang definition of the term. So as much as this stuff does make me chuckle, I'm under no illusion that we're pulling one over on them. Much more likely, they're getting a lot of free PR for the "principle" these parties are meant to be pushing.

Come for the immature snickering at our expense, stay for the posturing about socialist boogeymen.
posted by Riki tiki at 4:49 AM on April 15

I didn't think it was a Dick Armey which Senator Vitter was interested in.
posted by gman at 5:42 AM on April 15

Has anybody in the media actually come out and explicitly stated the commonly accepted definition of tea-bagging yet, or is it a media-wide inside joke?

This actually has me trying to remember any other examples of this. It's fascinating to me from a media/reporting standpoint. Other than reciting talking points or using bogeyman language, how often do reporters do this trick of saying something without saying it?
posted by rokusan at 5:51 AM on April 15

Will FOX be disappointed if "National Teabagging Day" is a total balls-up?
posted by octobersurprise at 6:13 AM on April 15

ericb: Dick Armey before he dicks you!

Actually, it was "Dick Nixon before he dicks you" over thirty years ago.

How dare you compromise a classic bit of polital punnitry! Have you no common decency, sir?
posted by SteveInMaine at 6:20 AM on April 15 [2 favorites has favorites]

This article, written by Thom Hartmann two years ago, is a great look at the real Boston Tea Party, and the sentiments leading up to it.
posted by heathkit at 7:08 AM on April 15

Also, why isn't this being restricted to the "free speech zones"?

Simple, because only Republican Fuckwits like the Bish adminstration are willing to violate the constitutional rights of citizens simply because they disagree with them.
posted by Pollomacho at 7:15 AM on April 15

That's. What. She. Said.

Come on, guys.
posted by EricCunningham84 at 8:13 AM on April 15

I actually find Schuster a bit of a smug douche. This was kind of funny, in that he was playing it fairly straight, but in general. Meh.
posted by delmoi at 8:52 AM on April 15

From the Rachel Maddow/Ana Marie Cox interview Who wouldn't want to teabag John McCain?

ME. EEEEEEEEWWWWWWW.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 9:08 AM on April 15

Yes, let's waste our money on buying shitloads of tea that we intend to do nothing with but send to the Whitehouse where it will without a doubt be thrown away thus creating huge waste for a misguided purpose given that taxes are generally lower now and they technically do have representation, and with the money that we have now spent giving more sales tax to the government (with recognition of federal vs. state taxes in terms of the sales tax, but it's still a support of the overall system) that we are so upset with for spending our taxes 'irresponsibly' and thus, I guess, showing them some sort of what's what.

What's what is that we are fucking stupid and very ready to wield it.
posted by six-or-six-thirty at 9:15 AM on April 15

Fuck. A lot of these people are actually getting tax cuts—either that or their taxes are staying the same. Taxes are being raised on the rich. Very rich people are behind this astroturf movement. Over and over again, these middle/lower-income dimwits are fighting against moves that benefit them, but hurt the rich. They are so easily exploitable it is staggering. Unwittingly and ironically, they are the people being teabagged.

They are fighting the good fight against imaginary taxes on their daydreams (I forget who first turned that phrase—I believe it was a comment on some blog—but it's a good one).
posted by defenestration at 10:58 AM on April 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

John Cole pretty much sums the whole thing up:

You know what really irritates me about the tea parties? The basic fact that if right now, it were President John McCain and not President Obama, and nothing else had changed, these tea parties wouldn’t exist. You know it, I know it, and even the teabaggers know it. It is just such transparent bullshit that it is offensive. The most these guys ever did during the last lost eight years was put a limp Porkbusters logo on their website, but now that we have President Malcom X George McGovern Shabazz, they are freaking out like there is no tomorrow.

You thought the PUMAs were silly people, just accept the reality here. These are a few thousand angry, ignorant white Americans who are protesting the results of an election that was held six months ago. Taxes have nothing to do with it. They are pissed the black guy won.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 11:23 AM on April 15 [7 favorites has favorites]

Government waste is bad, I'm ok with protesting government waste. Now maybe I don't agree with these folks as to what government waste is, but that's clearly what the new tea parties started off being about. The biggest sign on msnbc's article hits a concern of a lot of people -- the government is spending more money than it has, and it may bite us later on.


This pro tea website is urging people to donate tea to foodbanks instead of trying to dump it somewhere.
posted by garlic at 11:36 AM on April 15

Well said, XQUZYPHYR
posted by Mister_A at 11:44 AM on April 15

the government is spending more money than it has

Um, it's been doing that for decades, mostly under administrations these dicks supported.
posted by Rykey at 11:45 AM on April 15 [2 favorites has favorites]

latimes: The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press last week released a survey that showed 70% of Americans had confidence in Obama to do the right thing on the economy. Just 38% expressed confidence in Republican leaders.
posted by garlic at 11:48 AM on April 15

This is the best level I've seen this joke taken to.
posted by heathkit at 11:48 AM on April 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

"The basic fact that if right now, it were President John McCain and not President Obama, and nothing else had changed, these tea parties wouldn’t exist."

Bingo. Where were these people 6 years ago when billions - 'B' billions were just lost in Iraq. Just poof - gone. Four years ago when the CBO was saying Bush's tax cuts were digging more of a hole for the deficit than domestic spending, they were - where? Two years ago the records showed Bush was the biggest spending president in the past 45 years (adj for inflation) - anyone send a friggin teabag in the mail?
Screw these hypocrites.
posted by Smedleyman at 4:54 PM on April 15 [2 favorites has favorites]

It's something special when the obvious can be printed in the Washington Post:

Without the spectacle of a 1773-style tea-bag dump in the square, the handmade signs became the focus of the event. Though ostensibly an anti-tax protest, it was more of an anti-Obama festival. Among the messages: "The Audacity of the Dope," "O Crap" and Obama as an acronym for "One Big Awful Mistake America." Some messages were ugly ("Napolitano -- Obama's Gestapo Queen," "Hang 'Em High Traitors," and a sign held by a young girl saying "Victim of Child Tax Abuse"). Others were funny ("Don't Talk to Me! I Forgot My Teleprompter"). Certain ones had sinister overtones ("Tax Slavery Sucks," and "Obama bin Lyin"). Then there was the guy holding a Cabbage Patch doll by its hair with the message: "My kid's growth stunted by your stimulus."

posted by peeedro at 7:04 PM on April 15

Wow. I hit up reddit and read some of the teabagging blog stories. Wow, just wow. What astonishing stupid people.

I'm actually having a hard time believing it really took place. Like, it must be some sort of grand Improv Everywhere joke.

The USA has a really big problem on its hands: it has a significant number of incredibly stupid, angry people on its hands, and organizations that are actively recruiting and organizing these people. How the hell are is the nation going to deal with that?

Here's a mean idea: promote the idea that the teabagging events were a sinister government plan to identify citizens for political reprogramming. Why, I bet the first to be sent off to the re-education camps will be those people who both discussed/read about the teabagging protests on the net and went to the protest! If you're against this government, it's really better to stay home and disconnect the internet. Keep your head really low until the next election. Boo!
posted by five fresh fish at 11:26 PM on April 15

Fmr. President George H.W. Bush To Host ‘Economic Leadership Forum’ With ‘Recognized Expert’ Rick Santelli
posted by homunculus at 8:05 PM on April 16

John Waters on the Origins of Teabagging.
posted by homunculus at 12:04 PM on April 17

With ‘Recognized Expert’ Rick Santelli

Yep, that's Rick Santelli alright. See, he is recognized.
posted by Pollomacho at 12:10 PM on April 17

wow, i saw jon stewart comment on how msnbc had become the daily show last night, but i hadn't seen the whole clip until now. That is kind of ...fucked up. I mean, I got less news reporting from that than a standard daily show, I think...

Not to mention that the daily show is usually funny, not just weirdly cringe-inducing. Okay, I get it, you are talking about balls! I'm not that impressed!
posted by mdn at 7:26 PM on April 17